The Innocent Flower
by drunkrobot
Summary: Twoshot: How does one spice up a short story that explores Deirdre Skye's motivations and flaws? Well, with Shakespeare. Obviously.
1. Chapter 1

**2099**

Music, recorded half a century ago and brought along by some crewmember desperate to cling on to something of their old home, bounced and rang through the metal corridor that had been their dining room for the last few months. There were once times when it was not needed to drown the clang and whirr of the machinery keeping them alive so that they might eat in peace, once open discussion easily flowed across the table, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner, and it was just as often revealing of entertaining stories and reminiscences of Earth as it was practical reports on the progress of the repairs.

Now, however, the pressures of the task have brought up cracks between the various departments, headed by the very officers who were supposed to keep the crew together. For large portions of the crew, including said officers, bonds as strong as family had to be forged to ensure their mission, their one shot at ensuring Man's survival, was a success. But, despite the final reports on the finest psychologists around Earth, the crew was _not_ like family, and in the case of some the common effort to survive was only being held together by the flying cage now sometimes-jadedly referred to as _U.N.S. Unity_.

At least a few _tried_ to rekindle the comradery of the earlier days, when all there was was 'The Job'. Captain Garland, of course, could be trusted to support begin conversation, lest tension fill the vacuum. His officers, again, were more hit-and-miss, as encapsulated by the three highest-ranking members at the improvised table, grouped by his insistence close to the end with him. Not that they looked the part, the Unity Project's heritage in the various civilian space programs leaving all crew in their pajamas more often than in any formal uniform. Lt. Commander Skye was almost the ideal, even with all the pressures of the early reanimation. She was among the least reluctant to start debates in front of the crew, and was at constant alert to aid the mission however she could. As Chief Botanist and Xenobiologist, her exact line of work had been of limited utility, but she did make herself useful in setting up the allotments in the emptied cryo beds. _Unity_ was never meant to keep a so many crew alive and walking in space this long, and her work meant more could be woken from the big sleep to try and finish the repairs before Arrival.

 _The service and the loyalty I owe,_

 _In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part_

 _Is to receive our duties; and our duties_

 _Are to your throne and state children and servants,_

 _Which do but what they should, by doing every thing_

 _Safe toward your love and honour._

Lt. Commander Godwinson, while not quite the Eagle Scout that Skye was, was still a vital chain keeping the crew together. Chief Psychologist and Ship Chaplain was a touchy combination of titles to give to one person, but Godwinson was nonetheless commanding of the empathy and charisma to hold a desperate group of people together through a mission, as her work in the Middle East proved apparent. Most of the officers could barely stand to be around her, but the crew held her in high regard, and Garland had to lean on this more often than he had felt comfortable with. Lt. Santiago, however, was the problematic one. He had been told that she seemed quite satisfied when she was the highest-ranking member in the room, though he was never one to know it. The other departments had been rather resentful of Security ever since they were first added to the mission plan, and Santiago had claimed a lot of popular support from the 'Redshirts' in talking down accusations of 'uselessness', though at the cost of making her the symbol of a barely-tolerated faction in the eyes of the officers. Garland caught himself, rubbing his aching head as his worries floated back up. Factions, cliques, gangs, these were not terms any ship captain wanted to be thinking about, whether on the water or shooting through space.

Finishing his toast, Garland turned toward Skye and tried to think of a conversation starter. _Anything_ would be better than the hollow joy of the music emanating from the lonely player

"Tell me, Deirdre, have you been making any progress on bioscans of Chiron?".

The botanist had been staring intently into her cereal, bags hanging under her eyes telling she had been working on more than just allotments in repurposed human freezers. The blank slate of exhaustion cracked into the tiniest giggle as Garland saw her attempt to recall the details of her research.

"Welcome hither:

I have begun to plant thee, and will labour

To make thee full of growing.

And hold thee to my heart. "

The unconventional reply caught the attention of the other officers, only for Santiago to huff and return to her eggs, and for Godwinson to let out a light chuckle. Never enjoying the feeling of being out of the loop, Garland inquired "You want to give me that report again, Lt. Commander?"

Godwinson clarified to the captain " _Macbeth_ , sir. It seems the Chief Botanist's hope for Chiron to be a planet of forests and gardens has been strengthened. Is that right, Skye?"

Pulling herself away from the hypnotizing swirl of the cereal, Skye wipes the daze from her eyes and falls back into as much of the professional academic she could. "My observations of Chiron will always be lacking as long as most of my team stays in cryosleep and the orion drive blocks most crew-accessible rigs from being fixed with the proper instruments, but she looks more and more of a paradise with every sight we take. Free Carbon seems to be a rarity in the atmosphere, effectively a trace element, but the ground seems to be teeming with organic nitrates. With the smallest of changes, an Earth plant could be put into the soil and barely know if it was an alien world or the valleys of Mesopotamia." The giddy mood growing in her gut was put on hold at that last comparison. Skye had never knew the ancient land that fueled civilization for thousands of years, only names in dusty old books like 'Ur' and 'Akkad' and 'Babylon'. "Well, before the Oil Shock, at least."

Silence reigned for a moment more.

Garland hoped to get the discussion back on track "Well, that is good to know. It would be a shame to come all this way for a desert, right? Though I hope it would be more than just the plants that won't need a suit. In my years in the North Sea, I never thought I'd miss rain as much as I do."

Skye, seemingly out of her quagmire in full, turned to properly address the captain. "A suit, no, even without any...development...on-planet. A simple rebreather would be enough for a human to survive, if the readings on atmospheric pressure ring true. As for rain, proper observations on weather patterns and rainfall would need to wait until final approach, but there _is_ weather and rainfall."

"What beasts will there be on Chiron?"

Three heads turned to meet the fourth. Santiago's back was rigid and straight, a woman of the army through and through. Though barely a centimetre above the scientist, Deirdre's was a life of study and learning, and her rank and basic training had not completely weaned her of the student's slouch that put Santiago above her. The eyes of the security officer, steady and empty from a short lifetime of violence, was piercing right into those of the scientist.

 _Yet do I fear thy nature;_

 _It is too full o' the milk of human kindness_

 _To catch the nearest way._

Deidre was only a moment stunned by the question, before pulling a generous smile in attempt to diffuse as always "Now, now, I'll be as pleased to meet little green men as anybody, as long as they knew how to make a good brew, but I'll need to collect a lot more data points on the flora before even an attempt at guessing the forms of fa-"

"That's not what I asked." Santiago interrupted, "I did not ask 'What beasts _are there_ on Chiron?', I asked 'What beasts _will there be_?', a very important distinction, is it not?"

This was the league of questioning, Skye guessed, was more the realm of Santiago's blend of natural philosophy than hers. Skye squirmed in the struggle to form a reply. Although used to the more literal and straightforward world of academia, she trusted that feigning anorak would irritate Santiago enough to get to the point. "Well, we have about 2,000 species of Earth animals in the seed banks for the purposes of husbandry and companionship. Mission Year 5 will see the first of these banks opened as we would hopefully have a sufficient number of pens constructed for-"

"Don't play a fool, unless that is all you are." Santiago cut, quickly growing impatient. Garland had been paying attention and was seeing what Santiago was trying to do. Whispering, hoping at least none of the crew would notice this latest episode "Lieutenant, I hope to God you are not giving every crewman on this damn ship a headache on purpose."

Godwinson had the thankless task of quantifying the behavior of such characters as Santiago, but both this and rank at least helped give her an edge in reigning in such behavior before it started, "No, no, sir, it is alright, the Lieutenant was just giving her thoughts on what Chiron will be like when we land. Weren't you, Lieutenant?"

Beneath the music and the eternal rumble of the ship, an almost imperceptible growl rumbled through the chest of the Lieutenant.

"Mankind, Skye.", answered Santiago, "Mankind will be on Chiron. Do you think my men slept across 40 years and 40 petametres just to shoot bugs?"

Nobody had a counter to this. Even Garland was reluctant to imagine what would happen if a schism was to form in the crew. Godwinson knew it as the worst case scenario, antennas and engine drives were designed to be repaired, the same was not true for men's souls.

Trying her luck, Santiago continued "Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?"

 _Fair is foul, and foul is fair:_

 _Hover through the fog and filthy air._

The three members of her audience glanced at each other, the two older members in exhaustion, the youngest in confusion. Deirdre critiqued "But Lieutenant, this ship contains the best and brightest of humanity, handpicked for the grandest mission of our history. We're not apes at the riverbed fighting over scraps of food."

A very rare sound came from Santiago. It sounded something like mild amusement "Exactly, Skye, we're not apes. Who do you think was the first to pick up a bone and smash it against the head of his foe, the backwards savage, or the 'Best and Brightest'? That moment was what made us more than an animal, what puts us beyond nature. Animals survive. We destroy.

She barely believed it, but Skye was agreeing somewhat with Santiago. Before finally going into cryosleep nearly 40 years earlier, she had took one last look of Earth from orbit. One could see the invading oceans, the receding ice caps, the burning deserts of trash and the brown tinge to what was once a halo of blue.

"Not anymore", countered Skye, finally, finding in herself the hope which had pushed her onto the _Unity_ all those years ago, "We vowed to never repeat those mistakes when we got onboard. Everywhere else in the Universe is a drift towards chaos, but nature, ultimately, builds order."

Similarly, it was not often for Santiago to smirk. It usually meant she thought her adversary was a non-threat. "That's the key, nature could grow and keep in balance for billions of years. But as I said, we're not of nature, not anymore. And when we grab a piece of nature, we make it not of nature as well. Rocks of Silicon and Uranium do not care to harm anything at all, left on their own they simply fade away with time. But put them in our hands, and they massacre tribes and flatten nations. Wolves knew their place in the circle of life, then we turned them into weapons, and we drove the mammoth to extinction."

 _Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men_

 _May read strange matters. To beguile the time,_

 _Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,_

 _Your hand, your tongue; look like th' innocent_

 _flower,_

 _But be the serpent under't._

The smirk left her face, resetting to the dispassionate guise of normality "Savour your time putting the animals you find under the microscope, for what we did to the wolf, we will do to them."

The Lieutenant stood up from the table, saluted Garland, and walked out, presumably to check up on drills with the security team.

"Now what the Sam Hell got into her to do that?" Garland blurted once he felt sure they were beyond her senses. "It's her job to be keeping heads level, not flinging shit right into the fan!"

"Then Saul and all the people who were with him rallied and came to the battle; and behold, every man's sword was against his fellow, and there was very great confusion." Godwinson quipped. "Whatever she's thinking, captain, it can't be for the interest of the crew. Might I suggest once we make Planetfall, we try to keep her in the field? This ship wasn't made to hold so many people awake for so long, perhaps some time outside would do her good?"

Both Garland and Godwinson stood up to return to their own duties.

 _When shall we three meet again?_

 _In thunder, lightning, or in rain?_

 _When the hurlyburly's done,_

 _When the battle's lost and won._

Skye sat quiet, deep in thinking.

 _That will be ere the set of sun._

She had to keep an eye on Santiago, as did everyone else on the ship, but even as she returned to her adhoc quarters and lab, shifting through the images of the little red world that her life course had locked her onto for rendezvous, she considered what had called it their home, and what her kind was going to do to them. She had done this manys of times, of course, but she always considered it would be something that needed protection and demanded responsibly, less it was lost forever like Earth. But now she was looking at it from another angle. Every new frontier, new era, new field of study, brought with it a new way for humanity to kill itself.

When they came down from the heavens to start their new home, what were they going to find this time?

 _Is this a dagger which I see before me,_

 _The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee._

 _I have thee not, and yet I see thee still._

 _Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible_

 _To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but_

 _A dagger of the mind, a false creation,_

 _Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?_


	2. Chapter 2

**M.Y. 2154**

The morning light of the primary star, Alpha Centauri A, bounced off of Santiago's face plate, the bright yellow star casting long shadows over the ruins of the fort's surface compound. The habitat dome had been the first to be destroyed by the Gaians, the old web of cables and fabric now blanketing the compound in tatters. Sticking out were the old buildings, firm stone scorched and chipped by laser fire. Santiago inspected the ground at her feet, an old parade ground now covered with rubble. The 200,000-strong population now lived underground, an ant colony of concrete and steel that ensured to her that the Cult of Skye would bleed for this ground.

They had to, the Colonel concluded. Fort Legion commanded the North-East strip of land dividing the Freshwater Sea from the Sea of Pholus. To the North, Gaian colonies, mad places of barbarism that practiced superstitious dogma and indulged decadent vices. To the South, Spartan farmland, cleared of xenofungus and fed by the rivers running into the Freshwater Sea from the heights of Mount Leonidas, a project of discipline and hard work that turned a stretch of alien hell into the breadbasket of humanity's last hope.

And Skye would destroy it all to please her gods.

Santiago turned her back on the Morning Primary and faced the North-West perimeter. Her troops, clad in exosuits, were moving the bodies of those who fell in their duty, and clearing and repairing damage to their entrenchments. It had been only a few hours since the latest attack from the Gaians, which like all the others before it, ended in failure. The Surface Operating Base had always been a calculated display of activity, lifetimes of training distilling what in inferior armies would be ill-led rushes to hobble together a decent enough defence for the next wave into ordered, sensible routines of movement with the precision of a watch. Softer societies would describe it as a dance. She cracked a smile.

 _Conscience is but a word that cowards use,_

 _Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe:_

 _Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law._

 _March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;_

 _If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell._

Her feet felt the trembling ground, and through her suit and 200 metres of alien air, the roar of great guns reached her ears. The impact artillery, the greatest works of the forges of Blast Rifle Crag, had their place in the old naval academy campus, bombarding the Gaian positions so that they didn't get any foolish ideas. At least, none that they hadn't already developed after two years of war and six months of this futile siege.

In truth, Santiago had always been familiar with foolish ideas, as intolerant as a life on the streets had made her of them. From as early as her selection for the Unity Project, she could trace the foolish ideas, and the heads whom they occupied, that had brought her to this detestable waste of time and ammunition that the Gaians referred to as a 'vendetta'. The position of captain on that wretched starship was always a political one. The Americans wanted an American in charge, and since they had the money and the Orion Drive, they got one. They couldn't put a military officer in the chair, because for some reason the UN was worried about being drowned in letters by 'concerned citizens'. So the position of Leader of Humanity's Hope fell to a second-rate captain of an Arctic research vessel. Somehow a career of ordering around undergraduates and sticking tags onto birds was to make a man an emperor. The officers of the ship did do their best to _act_ surprised when they found him with his throat cut open, and perhaps Lal or Godwinson or Skye were genuine, but she knew they were waiting for somebody to do it.

 _Ha, good father,_

 _Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act,_

 _Threaten his bloody stage. By th' clock, 'tis day,_

 _And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp._

 _Is't night's predominance or the day's shame_

 _That darkness does the face of earth entomb_

 _When living light should kiss it?_

 _'Tis unnatural,_

 _Even like the deed that's done._

Skye, the eternal teacher's pet. She knew that Zakharov tried to remove Skye from the ship roster, and Garland pushed to get him overruled. The reason why died with him. Did he want to have one more lackey he could depend on, something he knew he could control? Or did the old man fall for the accent? It didn't matter, what matter was that she came here to Planet, and she gathered together enough thralls to set up her little society. Santiago had to give her credit at this point, she was the last one she thought would enter the game once Garland was gone. The last time the two saw each other in the flesh was at the vote on the _Unity_.

 _Seven sat at the captain's meeting room, minus a captain. The chair was empty, the voice of mediation that once came from it silent. Fires the captain would've long ago put out were raging across the room. Some of them were doing their best to protect the Mission, to keep the statement of the UN as humanity's consensus, but it was becoming clear to them that the others were singing different tunes._

" _It is clear to all here that this attempt at a schism is the result of a murder, the ploy of a criminal.", Lal beckoned the table to consider. He was a surgeon, not a politician or public speaker, but the pressure he felt to calm the heads of those facing him reminded of hours of work administering chemotherapy, the methodical and stressful work to remove a cancer before it destroyed a life. "We are playing into the hands of an agent of chaos if we allow this ship to fracture."_

" _The circumstances of Garland's death are worrying, that is true.", began Morgan, perhaps the biggest unknown of anyone here, "But that does not excuse it of happening. This ship is without a leader, no amount of squabbling will undo that."_

 _An empty laugh was the only audible reaction to the tycoons words, a rare laugh from Commander Yang. "So says the stowaway. Director Lal is correct, the actions of a rogue must not condemn the Mission to chaos, we all swore to uphold the Charter. And within that charter is a line of succession, in which the role of Captain goes to the Second-In-Command, the Chief of Security, which is me."_

 _All eyes were on Yang. None cut into him so much as those of the Chief Psychologist. "How are you sure that you are Chief of Security? How are you sure you have any more right to be on this ship than Morgan? You might've indeed passed all psychiatric tests on Earth with flying colours because of your honest ability, but I am not a woman easily fooled, Yang, I've tested some of the despots of the world we've left behind, and might I say, I've become familiar with their type. 'Line of succession'? Were you worried Garland might produce an heir and undermine your claim to the throne?" Godwinson was angry at how difficult Yang had made her position. She was under oath to divulge the questionable accuracy of Yang's results, but the very charter she was trying to keep together pointed towards Yang as being the sole man on the ship with the right to take the chair, with his Lieutenant Santiago doubtless taking the lead of Security. Nobody, with the exception of Santiago, wanted Yang as Captain, and such was one of the biggest obstacles in keeping the Mission together._

 _Santiago was technically the lowest-ranked person in the room, but was lately commanding a lot of support with the crew in Security. The others were fully aware of the army she in practice had under her thumb. "So we should trust the word of the Ship Chaplain, then? Are you one to complain about putting undeserved faith into undeserving authority? We all went through those tests, if you are going to call one case into question, why not call into question them all?"_

 _Lal re-entered the fray, "Lieutenant, your addition to debate is always welcome, and we are familiar with your opinions on the Divine, however your talk is out of line, and you are jeopardizing the integrity of this mission."_

 _The meeting room filled with a howl of laughter, laughter from a source that did not laugh often laughter as deep as a puddle and as sincere as a conman. When Santiago was done, she continued._

" _You believe this mission has integrity? This mission is a mess. As it stands it is the white elephant of a world bureaucracy, from a world falling apart. This is a ship built by the lowest bidder, and I should know that, because he is sitting right next to me. In front of me are defendants of the politicians that had squandered decades of time to only produce this single, pathetic voyage into the naked unknown. You suggest to me that I am the one jeopardizing integrity? You might be looking at one of the few with any integrity left._

 _The five onlookers, individuals of various levels of experience at debate, were unnerved as one at the meeting of glares between Santiago and Lal, superseding even the abortive tirade between Godwinson and Yang. Zakharov was the first to dare breaking the silence. "Perhaps the debate is getting too personal. If there is still a solution, then it will not be reached by bickering. Now, I am sure nobody here is desiring a split of crew, a dividing of resources benefits no one. But perhaps a modification to the Charter as it holds right now can make everyone happy, or content at the minimum? After all, we were all selected for our ability to adapt when it is necessary."_

" _No, absolutely not." Lal was the most surprised of all to hear such direct words come from his mouth. Zakharov was Chief Science Officer and hence Third-In-Command, making him Lal's superior. Managing to realise the implications of what he was doing, he saw that the only measure he could take was finish his point. "The UN Charter is the creation of 9 billion humans, who fought and saved and died and survived to keep the wisdom of thousands of years of history alive. We are only seven, the figureheads of one million. An amendment to the Charter can only come from Earth. That is the end of it."_

" _Lal."_

 _This was a new voice for the meeting. Effectively, she was the smallest player sitting at the table, by far the most reluctant leader and with the smallest following. For months she had been the inoffensive glue between Garland, Godwinson and Lal, the mediator, the voice of calm for the egos. She was dependable, reliable, loyal._

 _Deirdre said to Pravin, "Earth is dead."_

 _Somehow, this dispelled the tension in the air, only for it to come back anew. In a certain, indescribable way, the tension felt bigger, wider, that much less comprehensible._

" _The dish has been repaired for two months now, and they would be sure that we would now be ready to make Planetfall. If there was anyone still alive on Earth, we would hear it. But even now, we hear nothing, not the faintest radio signal. Earth isn't falling apart, it isn't going out of control, it is dead. All there is now, is us."_

 _For an instant, seven human beings sat together at a table. Beside all the struggling, all the arguments, there had been the mutual denial of one harsh truth. For the first and last moment, Pravin and Sheng-ji, Miriam and Prokhor, Nwabudike and Corazon were all on the same page._

" _There is us and Chiron. Now, I am not a student of politics, or business, or war, but I know enough to realise we have managed to bring them all with us to the stars. I am afraid that, with things as they are, a united crew will only allow one of you to attain control over all of humanity, and of the new home we now seek. Not one person here deserves that authority. The one person who might treat it with respect is now dead, possibly by the hands of someone at this table."_

 _Deirdre stood up, straightening the creases in her uniform._

" _I will have to inform my crew. You will all need to inform yours. I'm sorry."_

 _Skye walked out of the room._

 _All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!_

 _All hail, Macbeth!_

Santiago had always been practical. Survival was her existence, idle thought her enemy. Yet, behind the faceplate, where the image of Colonel Corazon Santiago, Leader of the Spartan Federation, she could afford a smirk at history. For history recorded the upright, studious, loyal Lieutenant Commander Deirdre Skye as having dissolved Project Unity, the final legacy of the humans of Earth.

A soldier walks up to the Colonel, datapad in hand. "Colonel, the latest from Recon. The funguslovers from the last wave have taken casualties up to 80%. The Plasma Steel barrier is doing wonders against their gatling lasers."

"Excellent, Spartan, I want an update from Major Rahmani about the progress of the hydrofoils. When they land, I want the best Skye has to give in the trap."

"Yes, Ma'am, on it!"

One didn't expect Gaians to be acutely aware of military history, but Santiago had doubts if even they were ignorant of the legacy of Stalingrad. True, Fort Legion was surrounded by Gaian trenches, rather embarrassingly cut off from the South by the surprise landing there by the Gaians six months ago. But, the Spartan Navy organised and crushed the token gunboats of the Gaians, and thus control of the Freshwater Sea returned to Sparta. Even as Gaia funnels more of their 'soldiers' into attempting to break open Fort Legion, a landing of a scale unparalleled on Planet will cut off their lines of communication to the homeland in the North. They will be eradicated, and Sparta will have freedom of movement all the way to Blackroot Palace on the neck to Pholus Ridge. The entire South of the continent would be theirs.

It would only be a year late, Santiago grimaced. Her advisors had assured her Skye was a kitten, a nonthreat to her professional, if still small and underdeveloped, citizen-army. And true, they had early successes, taking Nessus Shining and Silverbird Park on the Western shores of Freshwater Sea, but then it had hit them. Skye had to deal with the mindworms as much as they did. Yes, as much as she loved to put the foul creatures before the human race, the swarm hated her as much as it hated any other human being. That meant building an army. Not to the same extent as the Spartans, but enough to defend her colonies. In fact they went further. Such did they hate burning xenofungus and building roads that they became quite the masters of terrain, reinforcing their positions well before all predictions expected them to. Indeed, she will have to integrate the more...agreeable troops into her army when the fight was won.

"Colonel! Enemy movement!"

All Spartans moved back to the perimeter. Santiago included. Through her periscope, she looked out upon the approaches to Fort Legion. There was no forest or fog to shelter an advance. All too common on Planet, the No-Man's Land between the Gaian trench and the Spartan perimeter was completely dead. During a more honourable age of warfare, temporary truces would be declared in order to remove bodies from where they fell. This was no such age, the land being host to a growing number of Gaian corpses, motionless piles of humanity in sandy red exosuits. Beyond them, one could see the Gaians, seemingly, doing something even they were too smart to do.

Flags were going up along the trench, the Gaian red rose enveloped by a green diamond with thorns. Muffled by two layers of suit, theirs and hers, the Gaians in the trench, hours ago dying and running back to cover, where...shouting. They were shouting rather triumphantly, in fact. Shouting as if the battle had been one and Gaia reigned supreme. Santiago had to give credit to the last woman who had ever shut her up, she honestly had no idea what they were doing. Perhaps they were starting to recruit from mental hospitals.

All at once, the shouting stopped. A woman's voice began to flow across No-Man's Land, assisted by loudspeaker. "Spartans of Fort Legion! This is Acting-Major Aweke of the Gaian Third Shock Company! For many months we have surrounded your fort! Your reinforcements have not come, your relief has not arrived! You pride yourselves in your martial prowess, but you are arrogant and dismissive of your peers! I understand that Colonel Santiago is present in your fort, am I correct?"

Santiago knew better than to look up from her cover, unless she wanted the war ended with a single shot, but she knew her presence at the fort was well distributed across Gaian Command. It may have well been her presence that had made the Gaians so desperate to take the fort. Grabbing the loudspeaker, Santiago yelled "I am here, Gaian whore!", to the cheer of every Spartan on the perimeter.

Aweke responded "You reputation precedes you, Ma'am! I have an offer here, directly from the Lady Deirdre Skye herself!" It was the turn of the Gaians to cheer.

"And what does the Lady Skye want to offer?", shouted Santiago, "Her total and unconditional surrender?" It seemed the two sides settled into exchanging cheering privileges.

Aweke rang out again, this time with a edge of what may be annoyance, or may be malice. "No, in fact. Your imperialist aggression has forced us into a wasteful conflict that invites destruction of both each other and of this planet! You are given a chance to atone for this! Surrender yourself and your fort, and you will be treated humanely and with dignity! This fight may be ended with diplomacy and decency! But refuse, and continue to hold onto false hopes for victory, and we shall unleash unspeakable horrors upon you!"

For the longest instant, Santiago weighed the options before her. The Gaians were now trying a completely different tact, any probably wouldn't try it if they didn't have something up their sleeve. On the other hand, they had just suffered an awful defeat and reek of desperation.

"You treefucking savages must be even more stupid than we give you credit for! I call your bluff!" And meeting this was the loudest roar yet from the Spartans.

"I'm warning you! None of you will survive this! If you care for your people, Colonel, you will take this offer!"

"Give us everything you have! Whether it is by your order or mine, we will take it!"

Silence graced the battlefield for the final time.

"Very well. May the Creator have mercy on you all."

Santiago had expected many things. She expected a last desperate charge that would end in the total slaughter of all Gaians present. She expected some grand artillery barrage that would nevertheless fail to penetrate the underground complex that held the colony, or even the surface bunker they used for immediate shelter. Perhaps a new weapon fitted to a recon rover, was to vault over the trench and dash towards the perimeter to try and redo what the British did in Flers–Courcelette in 1916. Most of all, she expect nothing, the bluff ignobly revealed.

She could hear a rumble across the trenches behind the Gaian front line. She could because the Gaians were staying quiet, even quieter than they were when preparing an attack. The rumble was ever so slightly getting louder, as if whatever was causing it was speeding up, or moving closer.

That was when the contents of Hell spilled over the Gaian trench.

"Mindworms!"

A horrifying mass of flesh, a million organisms in a single, unbroken, advancing wall of destruction, crawled over the top of the trench and began moving forward, toward Fort Legion.

The Spartans were the closest thing humanity had to being 'used' to mindworms. They had cut their way through the continent, happily cooking xenofungus out to make way for civilisation, and it seemed the life of Planet was only too eager to repay them in kind. Mindworm boils were unlike any other foes in human history There was no head, no weakness in the gestalt intellect. You had to annihilate the entire boil before your were safe. Creatures of Earth also did not wage war via psychics. How they did it was not yet understood, but Mindworms could paralyse a foe by using their deepest fears. People who suffered psy attack and survived in a state fit to describe what they saw were few and far between, but those that did told of seeing...experiences, delusions, subconscious existence magnified into the conscious. The primal fear of death, wariness of danger, exposure to the senses, all were turned to eleven when under psy attack. It was only through discipline that a soldier could keep their finger on the trigger of their flamegun long enough for the boil to get cooked to a crisp before it reached their position. Fortunately, the Spartans had that in abundance. Unfortunately, they had expected enemies claiming descent from Earth, and were holding impact rifles, almost useless against a mindworm mass.

"Flameguns! Pick up your flameguns!", cried the officers, knowing after decades of training that even experienced troops needed reinforcement to not break, and that breaking meant certain death.

Spartans knew to always keep their flameguns close, but often had time to equip for an attack. Usually the sensor relays set up around the colony would detect the boil long before an attack was imminent. The siege from the Gaians broke that, but the Spartans took solace that a mindworm boil would first have to go through the Gaians first. Here, though, there had been no warning at all. The dash to react reminded Santiago of the early years, before mindworm sensors gave her colonies defence in depth.

This was all happening within a tiny portion of Santiago's mind. The rest was bellowing orders, reassuring Spartans that victory was certain, and keeping the trigger on her flamegun pulled. Streams of fire poured over the embankments and into the creeping mass, by now among the largest boils Santiago had ever seen in her long time on Planet, but their behaviour was different. Normal mindworms simply advanced in a straight line, jet of fire or not. These were arching around the jets, forming almost into wedge formations. And still, the wave of alien life advanced.

"Keep firing, you sons of bitches!" Screamed an officer, "Do you want to-ah, ah, AH! OH GOD! AHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The man collapsed onto the floor, holding his head so tightly he threatened to crush his own skull. The Spartans next to him could not help but turn to see their commander frozen in terror.

"No!", shouted Santiago, "You keep firing! Don't stop!"

Along the line, more and more men and women began collapsing, officers and NCOs. Santiago began to realise that the mindworms were not attacking randomly, but were sniping the nerves and sinew that controlled the muscle of her army. Without them, the Spartans were beginning to break away from the wall. Some did it to try and form a second line. Others did it because it was they only thing they could think to do. Some simply ran.

Then the attack hit Santiago. A million devil's voices poured into her mind at once. The feeling of falling one sometimes gets when jolting awake from sleep stretched out for agonising milliseconds. Distant memories, of weakness, of pain, emptied themselves onto Santiago's nervous system, and her body shuddered, jolted, and fell backwards.

The last conscious, clear thought of Corazon Santiago, before the mindworms flooded over the Plasma Steel barrier, enveloped her, and began burrowing its eggs into her skull, was the realisation that the Gaians had tamed these monsters.

* * *

"Did anybody survive?"

Her intelligence officer considered this question, and restated the details of the report. "Enemy casualties on the surface was total. Our handlers would have detected them otherwise. For the underground population, mindworms can chew through anything less than Plasma Steel. It did not take them long to make a shaft down and enter the complex. At that point, they are almost uncontrollable, the most we could do right now it to give them general directions and let the tide ebb and flow. They spent three hours down there, if anybody managed to live through that, then we didn't see them."

"And you found her?"

He understood this to be a delicate matter, "...yes. She was almost unrecognisable, but DNA and fingerprint samples match her _Unity_ records perfectly. No clone, no android, we have the real deal."

"So she's dead."

Aside from the splashing water of the pond to the side of the great room, not a sound was made for either of them to hear.

At last he replied, knowing the words of the Lady were less of a question and more of a statement. "The full report will be on your datapad. It also includes a report from Lindly and the feedback from the mindworm handlers. We will of course adapt our current tactics to this first test in combat, should we need to perform follow-up missions in order to-"

"Please, not right now. I will call for you later."

The intelligence officer was caught mid-thought. "I-yes, my Lady."

Turning to leave, the officer looks back one more time. "I am aware of the precedent this sets, and I worry about where it'll lead, but it was either this or lose half our territory and all of our sovereignty."

The two locked eyes for but a moment.

 _Thou hast it now—king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,_

 _As the weird women promised, and I fear_

 _Thou played'st most foully for't._

"Ma'am."

The officer turned back away and walked to the bottom of the office and through the door, leaving Lady Deirdre Skye on herself.

He was right, she told herself. The war had been dragging on and the economy was stalling from so many workers being conscripted, plus Sant-the Spartans were going to strike eventually with their domination of the Freshwater Sea. They risked everything on surrounding Fort Legion, and since the moment they knew _she_ was in there, then one way or another, they had to take her out.

By most metrics, she had never been at so high a point since Planetfall. The Spartan war plan for the next few months was in shambles, and there was no strong central authority to demand a new course of action. Nessus Shining was declared an open colony as the Spartans withdrew, and the Lightfoot Regiment were on their way to liberating it officially in the next few days.

Taking out a bottle of scotch whiskey and a glass, she poured herself a drink. The idea was that she was rewarding herself on a job well done. Even as it slid down her throat, she failed to convince herself

Standing up and walking over to the pond, datapad in hand, Deirdre sat by the edge and dipped her bare feet into the water. She was now 90 years old, 129 counting the time in cryosleep, and while the anti-aging therapy ensured the only exterior signs of it was the greys at the roots of a few hairs, her susceptibility to highs was getting increasingly numb. She found that what calmed her down was as effective as ever. Feeling the nibbles of fish at her toes, Deirdre considered the choices she had to make in her life.

It was her call to research the capturing and training of mindworms. Already, people she knew and respected suffered horrible fates in the quest for this dubious achievement, and when she had finally bottled the destructive potential of humanity's greatest plight on this world, she used it to fulfil the dreams of conquerors and tyrants from since before the written word.

 _The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step_

 _On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,_

 _For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;_

 _Let not light see my black and deep desires._

 _The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be_

 _Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see._

Her whole life, she never thought she would even be capable of such a thing. Even as late as her decision to break off from the _Unity_ , her convictions were crystal clear.

 _As we descend to Chiron, we make a promise. A promise that will hold for our children, and ours children's children, and for every generation of humanity to come ahead, whether we survive for twenty years or two billion. It is to Chrion, and to the people we shall become living upon her - NEVER to repeat the tragedy of Earth._

And now here she was, looking at images of people turned into mindworm larval nests by her orders.

She hadn't considered herself religious since she was a teenager, but she could feel a pain on her that won't subside, as though 200,000 souls were weighing down on her. The historian within her was curious if Harry S. Truman felt similar using the atomic bomb to level Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Sahera Al-Gazani using bioweapons to render half of Iran sterile. When the other leaders of this planet, and she was sure they were out there, came to know about what she did, how was history to record the Fall of Fort Legion?

She did what Santiago always promised herself she would do, she had mastered the life of Planet and had turned it into her army. A feeling of dread, deep within her, was considering she had went too far. The conclusion she reached was bitter. She had done what she had done, and if she failed in her task her people would atone for her sin. She had entered the game a lifetime ago, and now she was playing for keeps.

 _For mine own good_

 _All causes shall give way. I am in blood_

 _Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,_

 _Returning were as tedious as go o'er._

Skye moved on to the next report


End file.
